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Biographical details

Dr Juanita Feros Ruys is a Senior Research Fellow and Associate Director of the Medieval and Early Modern Centre. She is also Director of the Sydney Node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions and Honours and Postgraduate Co-ordinator of the Medieval and Early Modern Centre.

Research interests

Juanita is undertaking a number of research projects within the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. Her primary project is a study of the attribution of emotions to demons in the High Middle Ages, and associated with this is a study of the role of the European demonic in colonial responses to the Australian landscape. With director and documentary filmmaker Cassie Charlton, she is producing a documentary about this Australian experience.

Juanita’s other research interests include twelfth-century first-person life narratives and texts of the self; the writings of Abelard and Heloise; the writings of Latinate medieval women and their post-medieval reception; the literature of experience and empathy in the Middle Ages; and didactic literature of the premodern period.

Juanita has recently published a book on the late life poetry of Peter Abelard (The Repentant Abelard, Palgrave, 2014) which includes editions, translations, and commentary on Abelard’s Carmen ad Astralabium and Planctus.

Current projects

Juanita’s current book projects focus on the broad history of medieval demonology (contracted with Medieval Institute Publications), the history of demonic emotions in the high Middle Ages (The Secret Life of Demons), and translations of Scholastic writings on demons. She is also collaborating with director Cassie Charlton on the documentary film, The Devil’s Country, about the application of the medieval demonic to colonial Australia.

With Dr Clare Monagle, Macquarie University, she is co-editing Volume 2: A Cultural History of the Emotions in the Medieval Age (350-1300) of the six-volume A Cultural History of the Emotions (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2017).

In addition she is preparing edited and co-edited volumes on the lexis of ‘emotion’ and the alternative history of empathy in the premodern world.

Ruys, J., Ward, J., Heyworth, M. (2013). The Classics in the Medieval and Renaissance Classroom: The Role of Ancient Texts in the Arts Curriculum as Revealed by Surviving Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers.

Ruys, J. (2012). 'Nude Scenes of Lovemaking and Violation on Stage and Screen' Heloise and Abelard, Old Bones and the Uses of the Past. In Tony Gibbons and Emily Sutherland (Eds.), Integrity and Historical Research, (pp. 146-166). New York: Routledge imprint of Taylor & Francis. [More Information]

Ruys, J. (2010). From Virile Eloquence to Hysteria: Reading the Latinity of Heloise in the Early Modern Period. In Yasmin Haskell, Juanita Feros Ruys (Eds.), Latinity and Alterity in the Early Modern Period, (pp. 137-167). Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers.

Ruys, J. (2008). Didactic "I"s and the voice of experience in advice from medieval and early-modern parents to their children. In Juanita Feros Ruys (Eds.), What Nature Does Not Teach: Didactic Literature in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, (pp. 129-162). Belgium: Brepols Publishers. [More Information]

Ruys, J. (2008). Heloise, monastic temptation, and "Memoria": rethinking autobiography, sexual experience, and ethics. In Classen, Albrecht (Eds.), Sexuality in the Middle Ages and early modern times: new approaches to a fundamental cultural-historical and literary-anthropological theme, (pp. 383-404). Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. [More Information]

Ruys, J. (2007). Medieval Latin Meditations on Old Age: Rhetoric, Autobiography and Experience. In Albrecht Classen (Eds.), Old Age in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Neglected Topic, (pp. 171-200). Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. [More Information]

Ruys, J. (2005). Peter Abelard's Carmen ad Astralabium and Medieval Parent-Child Didactic Texts: The Evidence for Parent-Child Relationships in the Middle Ages. In Albrecht Classen (Eds.), Childhood in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: the Results of a Paradigm Shift in the History of Mentality, (pp. 203-227). Berlin (Germany); New York (USA): Walter de Gruyter. [More Information]

Ruys, J. (2000). Quae Maternae Immemor Naturae: The Rhetorical Struggle over the Meaning of Motherhood in the Writings of Heloise and Abelard. In Bonnie Wheeler (Eds.), Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman, (pp. 323-340). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Ruys, J. (2016). The Devil's Coach House and Skeleton Cave: Colonial Tales, the Medieval Demonic and the Absence of the Indigenous. Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural, 5(2), 159-188. [More Information]

Ruys, J. (2016). The Devil's Coach House and Skeleton Cave: Colonial Tales, the Medieval Demonic and the Absence of the Indigenous. Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural, 5(2), 159-188. [More Information]

Ruys, J., Ward, J., Heyworth, M. (2013). The Classics in the Medieval and Renaissance Classroom: The Role of Ancient Texts in the Arts Curriculum as Revealed by Surviving Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers.

2012

Ruys, J. (2012). 'Nude Scenes of Lovemaking and Violation on Stage and Screen' Heloise and Abelard, Old Bones and the Uses of the Past. In Tony Gibbons and Emily Sutherland (Eds.), Integrity and Historical Research, (pp. 146-166). New York: Routledge imprint of Taylor & Francis. [More Information]

Ruys, J. (2012). Love in the Time of Demons: Thirteenth-Century Approaches to the Capacity for Love in Fallen Angels. Mirabilia, 15(2), 28-46.

Ruys, J. (2010). From Virile Eloquence to Hysteria: Reading the Latinity of Heloise in the Early Modern Period. In Yasmin Haskell, Juanita Feros Ruys (Eds.), Latinity and Alterity in the Early Modern Period, (pp. 137-167). Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers.

Ruys, J. (2008). Didactic "I"s and the voice of experience in advice from medieval and early-modern parents to their children. In Juanita Feros Ruys (Eds.), What Nature Does Not Teach: Didactic Literature in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, (pp. 129-162). Belgium: Brepols Publishers. [More Information]

Ruys, J. (2008). Heloise, monastic temptation, and "Memoria": rethinking autobiography, sexual experience, and ethics. In Classen, Albrecht (Eds.), Sexuality in the Middle Ages and early modern times: new approaches to a fundamental cultural-historical and literary-anthropological theme, (pp. 383-404). Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. [More Information]

Ruys, J. (2008). What Nature Does Not Teach: Didactic Literature in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods. Belgium: Brepols Publishers. [More Information]

2007

Ruys, J. (2007). Medieval Latin Meditations on Old Age: Rhetoric, Autobiography and Experience. In Albrecht Classen (Eds.), Old Age in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Neglected Topic, (pp. 171-200). Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. [More Information]

Ruys, J. (2005). Crawford, Patricia, Blood, Bodies and Families in Early Modern England (women and men in history) (review). Parergon, 22(2), 209-211.

Ruys, J. (2005). Peter Abelard's Carmen ad Astralabium and Medieval Parent-Child Didactic Texts: The Evidence for Parent-Child Relationships in the Middle Ages. In Albrecht Classen (Eds.), Childhood in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: the Results of a Paradigm Shift in the History of Mentality, (pp. 203-227). Berlin (Germany); New York (USA): Walter de Gruyter. [More Information]

Ruys, J. (2005). Williams, Steven J., The Secret of Secrets: The Scholarly Career of a Pseudo-Aristotelian Text in the Latin Middle Ages (review). Parergon, 22(2), 262-264.

Ruys, J. (2000). Quae Maternae Immemor Naturae: The Rhetorical Struggle over the Meaning of Motherhood in the Writings of Heloise and Abelard. In Bonnie Wheeler (Eds.), Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman, (pp. 323-340). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.